But here were books, and here were men who had penetrated deeper and knew
more. I took their word for all that they averred, and I became their
disciple. It may appear strange that
such should arise in the eighteenth
century; but while I followed the routine of education in the schools of
Geneva, I was, to a great degree, self taught with regard to my favourite
studies. My father was not scientific, and I was left to struggle with a
child's blindness, added to a student's thirst for knowledge. Under the
guidance of my new preceptors, I entered with the greatest diligence
into the search of the philosopher's
stone and the elixir of life. But the latter soon obtained my undivided
attention: wealth was an inferior object; but what glory would attend the discovery,
if I could banish disease from the human frame, and render man
invulnerable to any but a violent death!

Nor were these my only visions. The raising of ghosts or devils was a
promise liberally accorded by my favourite authors, the fulfillment of
which I most eagerly sought; and if my incantations were always
unsuccessful, I attributed the failure rather to my own inexperience and
mistake than to a want of skill or fidelity in my instructors. And thus
for a time I was occupied by exploded systems, mingling, like an unadept,
a thousand contradictory theories, and floundering desperately in a very
slough of multifarious knowledge, guided by an ardent imagination and
childish reasoning, till an accident again changed the current of my
ideas.